SAPPHIRE Radeon 7750 low profile review

Earlier this year we reviewed the SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7750 Ultimate GPU. The “Ultimate” moniker comes from the advanced passive cooling that SAPPHIRE is famous for, allowing this affordable mid-range DirectX 11 GPU to be overclocked for higher performance than its price range would suggest. On top of that, it’s totally silent.

They’ve now released a low-profile version of the 7750, for Mini-ITX and HTPC applications. For those that want to build a tiny PC that can play games, this might be the card for you.

The SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7750 Low Profile is the exact same Graphics Core Next “Southern Islands” GPU as the Ultimate (which we awarded our Silver Outstanding Product award to), but the form factor is considerably different. It’s too small to be passively cooled, so SAPPHIRE designed a single-slot low-profile heatsink and very quiet fan for this form factor.

The card comes in the box with a Mini-ITX bracket installed on it:

The default Mini-ITX bracket with the DVI, Mini DP, and HDMI Micro port

As you can see, out of the box it supports DVI, MiniDP, and Micro HDMI. It also comes with a MiniDP to DP adapter, a Micro HDMI to HDMI adapter, and a DVI to VGA adapter. With what’s included here, you will be able to hook it up to any possible display (okay, not composite or component, but come on, don’t be silly).

While this card fits perfectly in a normal PC and performs admirably for such an inexpensive card (see benchmark numbers in Nick’s 7750 Ultimate review—they’re unchanged), the real power of this little sucker is in upgrading a Mini-ITX PC to something that can play modern games, or as a fantastic Mini-ITX HTPC.

I just so happened to have the perfect patient for an upgrade operation: My parents’ old Acer Aspire X1300 from a few years back. It was getting a bit long in the tooth—good enough for grandma and grandpa, but when my kids were over their house for the weekend and wanted to play WoW, TF2, Battlefield 3, or League of Legends, the onboard NVIDIA GeForce 8200 didn’t really cut the mustard. Okay, it played WoW alright, but I think WoW can run on a refactored Dreamcast at this point, so that doesn’t say much.

The Acer is tiny, but it does contain a single PCI-E x16 slot, so I rubbed my hands together and got to work.

A tight fit, but it works... almost.

As you can see, the fit was very close. I plugged it in and turned it on and started installing drivers. After about five minutes of run time, I smelled burning electronics and, with the experience that only comes with years of building (and breaking) PCs, I immediately yanked the power cord—I knew that smell.

As it turns out, the front panel USB header cable was running between the GPU and the case, and it was rubbing up against the SAPPHIRE fan, preventing it from turning. The card got super hot (I didn’t measure it, but it was burning to the touch), but the system was running fine as if nothing was wrong.

I used duct tape to flatten the USB header cable against the case, allowing the fan to spin, and I went on my merry way, this time with the fan working properly.

The card idles at 39C, and under load got up to 46C. The single-slot fan, even with that tiny amount of clearance, worked well. An interesting aspect of the cooling setup is that the fan blows back into the case rather than out through venting slots on the cover. You may want to take that into consideration if space inside your small case isn’t vented properly elsewhere.

The Eyefinity thing

I can’t think of many people who will run five monitors from a low-profile GPU… especially since a budget that allows for five monitors probably allows for a high-end GPU to run them, but the fact is that the 7750 supports up to five monitors with Eyefinity.

When we reviewed the 7750 Ultimate, a Redditor took issue with the fact that we mentioned daisy-chaining with MST hubs, something AMD has been claiming their cards support for quite some time.

“AMD and its partners have been making claims about how many monitors their DP enabled cards can drive for literally 2 years now on the back of the DP spec’s support of Multi-Stream Transport (MST) hubs. They’ve announced the hardware as being available early last year, late last year, early this year, and now maybe mid this year, maybe. It’s vaporware. You cannot attach 5 displays to this or any other AMD card that hasn’t been specifically created for 5/6 displays (such as the Sapphire Flex line, and there aren’t any for the 7000 series). I say this as the owner of 3 120Hz DP connected displays and a pair of 7970s in crossfire. Because I can only drive two of them via DP (the other via HDMI), I cannot to 120Hz across the three of them, and thus cannot do HD3D across them.”

AMD’s Robert “Thrax” Hallock responded candidly,

“I actually work for AMD, in the GPU division, so I can give you some insight on what’s going on. AMD GPUs are designed with DP1.2 MST, as you are obviously aware. Any monitor or monitor hub that is also MST-aware will enable the end user to connect up to three DP monitors per DP output.

The holdup is with the people who are actually making the DP hubs. Silicon issues first prevented them from getting hubs that even worked. Then they sorta worked, but only if you connected cables in a certain order and then powered on the PC (no hotplugging). Then they made hubs that were about twice the size of a Boxee Box (huge). Now they’re in the process of miniaturization. We’ve been told we’ll see retail models by the summer of this year, and we demonstrated some at the press even we held for the 7900 Series in Austin in December.

The reality is that we’re at the mercy of the people who make the adapters, hubs and cables. We can push and pressure, but we can’t make someone else’s business do something any faster. We don’t make these kinds of products, so there’s no economy of scale to do it ourselves.”

That was his response five months ago. To see if things have changed since then, we again asked Hallock if MST hubs were available yet. His response:

Partners like Bizlink are still at the miniaturization stage of product development. Current beta units are approximately the size of a child’s lunchbox, but retail units are expected to be closer to the size of a USB hub. At last report, we are told they’ll finally be available in Q4 of this year.

So there you have it. The card supports it, AMD doesn’t hide behind the fact that hubs are still unavailable, and it’s not really their fault.

If you’re looking for a fairly capable GPU that can fit in a low-profile bracket in a Mini-ITX installation, the SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7750 Low Profile is the card for you. The tiny size, the innovative cooling, and the always-great pack-ins that SAPPHIRE provides in the way of adapters and flexibility options all add up to a great package for enthusiasts in this price range. We’re happy to award this GPU the Icrontic Stamp of Approval.

More Icrontic awesomesauce

Comments

13 Aug 2012 ~ 9:39pmThrax
Once upon a time in 2011, in the rainy countryside of Sweden, I told some of Sapphire's product managers that they should make a single slot/low profile/Eyefinity-ready GPU. I told them there's a market for it.

14 Aug 2012 ~ 11:13am_k_
Do the people making the DP hubs not understand how to implement the standard well enough or is it loose enough in the industry that is creates issues, concerning the contrived scheme to get set-ups to work correctly?

14 Aug 2012 ~ 11:22amThrax
The standard is well understood and thorough. Miniaturization is a silicon and logic problem, not a spec issue.

20 Aug 2012 ~ 1:47pmprimesuspect
The only downside of that HIS card is that it is not single slot. That card would not, for example, fit in the case I used for this review. I have an email out to SAPPHIRE to answer the availability question.

20 Aug 2012 ~ 2:24pmGHoosdum
When will we reach a point in miniaturization that a card can be manufactured in low-profile with a 256-bit memory bus?

20 Aug 2012 ~ 2:57pmThrax
It could be done now, but such a memory bus would not benefit a GPU die of a size that consumes < 75W of power like this product. There would be more memory bandwidth than the available shaders could utilize.

Each die shrink bumps performance in this price range by about 20%, however, so whereas today's 7750 can do 1080p at medium settings, perhaps a hypothetical 9750 would do high/ultra. There could be a case for an increase bus width there, but a max of 192-bits is sufficient for gaming at 1080p resolutions, which is where products like these will sit for the foreseeable future. Shaders are also more important than memory bandwidth, to a degree.

20 Aug 2012 ~ 3:20pmGHoosdum
Thanks for the explanation. I've been using low-profile cards in my HTPC for a while now and I keep seeing reviewers complain about the limited memory bus, but based upon your explanation it seems like that shouldn't be a concern.

Thanks for the explanation. I've been using low-profile cards in my HTPC for a while now and I keep seeing reviewers complain about the limited memory bus, but based upon your explanation it seems like that shouldn't be a concern.

Just be glad that 64-bit memory buses are no longer found in this market segment.

20 Aug 2012 ~ 8:27pmdrasnor
Also, I've had real stability problems with my Sapphire 7750 full-size and PCI-E 3.0 enabled. I'm told this is because nobody knows how to implement PCI-E 3.0, and stay tuned for maybe a BIOS fix before the end of the year. Motherboard is an MSI H77MA-G43.

24 Aug 2012 ~ 11:37pmJiun
thanks for the review. I have been searching for the confirmation if this card will work in low powered machine. Now I am quite sure it will work in a low powered small form factor machine. 7750 will be a decent upgrade for my DC7800

28 Aug 2012 ~ 4:52pmRyanL
I was just curious as to how well this thing OCs; can GPU voltage be altered and if not, how fast can this thing get stable. Right now I'm running a low profile Palit GTS450 OCed quite a bit. The HD 7750 is just slightly faster judging by charts and wouldn't really bother with this if it wasn't an upgrade. I would really like to go with a low profile 7770 or better yet a 7850, but who knows when and if they'll ever be released. There's company named Afox which makes some higher powered low profile cards in Japan, but they're next to impossible and very expensive to get imported. Since you got ahold of this LP 7750 a little early, maybe you have the inside track on what's going to be released here in LP versions from HIS, Sapphire, Sparkle, or whoever. Any input is appreciated.